The Raintree Rebellion

by Janet Mcnaughton

  After a long silence, he pulls a com.D from the dashboard of his bus. “I have the passengers,” he says. That’s all.

  “Where are you taking me?” I ask.

  “You tell me,” he says. He’s still furious.

  “You could leave us at the corner of Keele and Bloor.”

  I’m so tentative, it sounds like a question. I’m afraid of him now.

  We stop for a red light and he looks at me. He’s still angry, but there’s nothing cruel or violent in his face. “I will take you to the main entrance of High Park.”

  “How could you know that? Who are you?” I ask.

  The light changes and he turns his attention to driving. I notice we’re not stopping to pick up passengers. When he speaks again, his voice is calmer. “You cannot be allowed to wander around by yourself. Do you know what would happen if anyone kidnapped you? This is a risk the Transitional Council was not prepared to take, even before anyone knew you could be so reckless.”

  It takes a minute for this to sink in. “Are you my bodyguard?” I ask.

  “I’m a minibus driver. I happened to come along and see you in a moment of need. I helped you out. That’s all we need to say.”

  I remember how he “happened” to be at the entrance to High Park the night I met Prospero, and the men in Queen’s Park today who looked like bodyguards. How much of that was planned? I wonder, but there’s no point in asking now. Suddenly I picture Kayko, circling Queen’s Park endlessly. I’m reluctant to expose her involvement, but she has to know I’m safe. “Kayko Miyazaki will be looking for me,” I tell Hanif.

  “Her people have been notified.” His voice is still curt with anger.

  “But I can take Sparrow to High Park?” I can’t believe they’ll let me do this.

  “Don’t make a habit of picking up stray children,” he says. He pauses for a moment, then continues. “We managed to contain this episode. Next time, there will be ‘repercussions.’”

  “What does that mean?”

  “It means this event was dealt with at the ground level.” I can tell he’s not accustomed to speaking about his work with someone like me. He’s struggling to explain without giving too much away and I can hardly understand him. “Your actions were deemed to be ill-considered, but harmless. So no one in authority will speak to you about this, because no report will be filed.”

  “You aren’t going to tell them?”

  “No one will be told.” He’s deliberately making his statements impersonal. “But, if it were ever to be known that this happened, well, you would never see me again.”

  I begin to understand the risk he’s taking for my sake.

  “Thank you,” I say.

  “You can thank me best by being more careful.”

  Sparrow hasn’t spoken since we left Queen’s Park. She looks terrified. I put my arm around her and give her a little hug. “Don’t worry. Everything’s fine. We’re going to the park.”

  I’m afraid Hanif might confront Prospero, but he stops the bus and opens the door as soon as he turns through the gates. “I will pick you up at the corner of Keele and Bloor in exactly thirty minutes,” he says as we leave the minibus. “Promise me you won’t take another risk like this.” His concern is genuine, not professional.

  Somehow, his sincerity undoes me. The tension of the day wells up, filling my eyes with tears. I can only nod as we leave the bus.

  I look down at Sparrow as Hanif drives away. She’s picked up on my distress and looks as if she might cry as well. If I were alone, I’d be useless now, but I have to pull myself together for her sake. I sniff and square my shoulders. “See over there, under the trees? That’s where you’ll be living.” I give her hand a little tug. “Come on,” I say. “Let’s meet everyone.”

  I’ve been worried that Prospero wouldn’t be here, but he must have seen us right away, because he’s walking toward us, smiling. His charm is like the warmth of the sun. Even Sparrow seems to feel it, for she doesn’t lag back as she might with another stranger.

  “So, this is Sparrow,” he says, smiling at both of us.

  “Do you have an apple for me?” Sparrow asks.

  “Hold out your hands,” Prospero says. He reaches behind her ear and a perfect apple drops into her hands, so quickly Sparrow gasps. “You had it yourself, all this time,” he tells her. “Now come and sit with Blake and me.”

  Prospero walks us through the encampment, saying nothing, letting Sparrow see the happy, busy children. Her eyes grow large as she takes everything in. He takes us to a bench, just a few metres from a playground swarming with raucous children. Sparrow clings to me at first, but Prospero steadfastly ignores her, making small talk with me about nothing. After a few minutes Sparrow says, “Could I go over there and play?”

  Prospero smiles. “I think you could. Blake will be leaving soon. Would you like to stay here with us?”

  “Yes, I would.”

  “Off you go then. After you play, someone will clean you up and then you can pick out some new clothes.”

  Sparrow runs to the edge of the playground, but stops, suddenly shy. An older girl comes over and squats down, talking to her and pointing to the monkey bars. After a moment, Sparrow takes her hand and off they go. She doesn’t look back at me.

  “She’ll be fine,” Prospero says. “We take in new children all the time. The other kids are very good with them. We teach them to welcome newcomers.” He pauses, then says, “This may be hard for you, but it’s best to give her time to settle in.”

  I hadn’t imagined this. “I was planning to help out with the ghost library.”

  Prospero is gentle, but firm. “The weekend after next you can.” I stand up, feeling empty. He seems to understand. “We know what we’re doing, Blake. She’ll be settled by then, you’ll see.”

  Sparrow is climbing the monkey bars now, laughing just as she did in my dream. She doesn’t need me. I take a deep breath. “All right,” I say. “I’ll see you in a while.”

  14

  My micro-dot has shaped my life, sometimes in ways I barely understand.

  —From the victim statement of Blake Raintree

  I’m afraid to face Hanif when Erica and I board the minibus the next day.

  “Good morning, ladies,” he greets us. “You look particularly fetching today.”

  There’s no crack in the facade. He’s an ambitious minibus driver with a quaint way of talking. Harmless, trivial. His disguise is perfect. But he doesn’t meet my eyes.

  Erica and I talk about anything but the day ahead of us while we travel, because the aides are sitting in on another Justice Council meeting today.

  “Have you heard from Marrella?” I ask. Unlike me, Erica is in contact with people from home daily. I’ve used the confusion of relocating and the demands of the work to explain my silence. If Erica sees through these flimsy excuses, she says nothing. It would be cruel to talk to everyone but Fraser. Even if he’s mostly in St. Pearl, he’d be sure to hear if anyone had news of me. But Marrella is pregnant, and she has auto-immune problems that are causing complications. I should be paying more attention to her.

  “I haven’t heard from her since she went to the hospital in Corner Brook,” Erica replies. “But Donna says everything is stable. Donna can’t wait to be a grandmother.”

  I smile. Donna’s had a hard time accepting wilful Marrella as her daughter-in-law. This baby seems to be changing everything. People do change.

  “I’m hoping the holo-conference line will be connected this weekend, so we can see William,” Erica adds. I nod and smile, but my heart lurches. Fraser is working with William.

  At work, when I see Kayko, I long to tell her what happened with Sparrow, to find out what happened to her. But I know we’ll have to wait, not just until we’re alone, but until we’re out of the building. Even then, we may not have privacy. Maybe privacy doesn’t exist. We fall in together behind Kenji and Erica on our way to the conference room.

  “This should be interestin
g,” Kayko says, “working out the details of accepting victim statements.”

  “That’s a breakthrough, isn’t it?”

  Kayko smiles as we enter the room. “It means the Justice Council will accomplish at least part of its mandate,” she whispers quickly.

  “Who’s chairing today?” Daniel Massey asks when everyone is settled.

  “I am,” Kenji replies. “You’ll find the agenda on your scribes. I took the liberty of sending it to the aides as well. The first item is carried over from yesterday: Who will be allowed to file a victim statement?” That sounds like an easy question, but when I call up the agenda, I see how complex it is. At least ten topics are listed under this heading.

  Kenji seems to want every possible opinion to be heard before decisions are made. Over the next few hours, the conversation goes back and forth. Sometimes it goes around in circles. That’s one thing I’ve learned since the Uprising: democracy has many appealing features, but it’s tedious. After an hour or so, I stop listening. Even Griffin appears to be doodling.

  “Next item: Will people living outside the prefecture be allowed to submit a victim statement?” This catches my attention.

  “Why would anyone living outside the greater Toronto area want to make a statement?” Daniel asks.

  “Maybe they were relocated during the technocaust, as I was,” Erica says. “We have the opposite question to deal with as well. What if someone living here wants to make a statement about events that happened because of the technocaust in some other protectorship?”

  “We can only deal with things that happened because of Queen’s Park,” Monique says. “If people want to submit statements about events that happened elsewhere, we could pass those along to Justice Councils in those places.”

  “But Justice Councils aren’t being established everywhere,” Erica says. “Take my case, for example. I was forced to flee from Toronto, and I ended up in a concentration camp in Terra Nova. They’ve already held elections in Terra Nova. There may not be a Justice Council there.”

  “Yes, but your problems began here,” Paulo de Lucas says. “So you should be able to submit a victim statement here.”

  “So everyone in those circumstances will be able to?”

  Erica asks.

  As everyone agrees, I realize I’ve been holding my breath.

  What would I do if I couldn’t present my victim statement?

  The councillors work out the fine points of victim statements and geography, then move on. “Should immediate family of those who perpetrated the technocaust be allowed to make victim statements?” Kenji reads. “This question is complicated, of course, by the fact that we don’t know how we’re going to deal with perpetrators.”

  “Let’s not whack that hornets’ nest today,” Daniel growls.

  “Hornets’ nest?” Paulo says. Monique quickly explains in what sounds to me like perfect Spanish.

  Kenji smiles. “I wasn’t planning to, but you can see how this muddies the waters. People applying for amnesty will seem very different from people facing trial.”

  “No matter how you look at them, why would their immediate family members qualify as victims?” Daniel asks. “These are the people who caused the suffering.” His voice is tight with the effort to control his anger.

  “We’ll need time to discuss this,” Monique says, “and it’s almost noon. I move we break for lunch.”

  Leaving the room, I can barely contain my fury. Those people and their family members shouldn’t have rights.

  We go back to our offices before lunch. Reflexively, I think of an apple for Sparrow, then I smile. Sparrow won’t need little scraps of help from me any more.

  “So, what did you think of that?” Erica cuts into my thoughts, jolting me back to reality.

  “I thought it was interesting,” I say, trying to keep my voice as neutral as possible. It doesn’t work.

  “Won’t you tell me what you really think?”

  “Erica, how can anyone even think about letting the relatives of those monsters make victim statements?” The words rip themselves from my throat. I sound like I’m choking.

  Erica looks shocked. “Does it mean that much to you?”

  I try to collect myself before I speak again. “Yes, it does.”

  “Blake, can’t you imagine how someone close to those running the technocaust could have been a victim of the events that unfolded?”

  I shake my head. I’m not even willing to consider the possibility. Anyone who lived with those criminals is guilty in my mind. Even they deserve to be punished.

  Erica comes over and takes my hand. “I understand this is hard for you,” she says. “I admire the way you’ve been able to deal with it.”

  I turn away quickly, tearing my hand from Erica’s, too ashamed to meet her eyes. I am not the person she thinks I am. I don’t even come close.

  I feel her hand on my shoulder. “Please don’t be angry with me, Blake.” She’s misunderstood my reaction, but how can I explain?

  “I’m not angry with you. I’m really not.” I turn back to her and wipe the tears that have started against my will. I’ve got to get away before I tell her the truth. “I’ve got to meet the others for lunch now,” I say. Erica looks disappointed, but she lets me go.

  When I came to work this morning, I hoped Kayko and I might go out for lunch so we could talk about yesterday, but she’s already gone when I look for her. By the time I reach the cafeteria, Kayko and Astral have faced off over their food. I can’t hear the words, but their angry voices carry over to me while I get my meal. The Transitional Council employees who sit at the other tables throw worried glances their way as I approach.

  Kayko’s words come into range. “That’s guilt by association. You can’t say someone is guilty of crimes committed by their parents or a spouse.”

  “Why not?” Astral shoots back.

  “They might not even have known. How can you be guilty of something you didn’t know about?”

  “They benefited, didn’t they? Didn’t they live comfortable lives while the rest of us suffered?”

  “Astral, not sharing in the suffering of others is not the same as being guilty,” Griffin says. These are harsh words, but his tone is mild.

  Astral looks like he wants to hit somebody. I know how it feels, that overwhelming anger, with nowhere to aim it. I sit down beside him. “What do any of you know about it?” he finally says, his voice bitter. Kayko looks down quickly, shamed because he’s right, she knows nothing of the kind of suffering he’s living with. Griffin does not look away, but he doesn’t answer either.

  What does Griffin know about it? I wish I knew. But now’s not the time to ask.

  Griffin looks at me. “What do you think, Blake?”

  I freeze. I’d rather not side with Astral against Kayko and Griffin, but my heart’s with him.

  Astral picks up on my distress. “Leave her alone.” His voice is quiet, but the intensity of it literally makes the others draw back. He sounds like he’s ready to kill.

  “Griffin isn’t trying to hurt her, Astral,” Luisa says quietly.

  “A lot of the people who harmed us weren’t trying to, Luisa. They didn’t even know we existed. They ruined our lives anyway.” Astral stands. His lunch is barely touched. “I’ve got to check about . . . something.” He leaves.

  Before I know what I’m doing, I’ve pushed my chair from the table to follow him.

  “Astral,” I call just before he disappears around a corner.

  The sound of my voice stops him.

  “You’re the only one who understands,” he says when I reach him.

  “I’m not sure that’s true,” I say. I intend to share what I wonder about Griffin’s past, but he cuts me off.

  “Blake, you’d be a lot happier if you didn’t always try to be so bloody good.” He makes the word “good” sound like a disease. I’m speechless, because I’ve often suspected the same thing about myself.

  “I’m sorry,” he say
s, but he doesn’t sound sorry, he sounds furious. Then he says, “It’s always the same. Every time I care about someone, I drive them away.” He’s gone before I can respond.

  I’m not sure I believe what I just heard. Did he say he cared for me? The shock is almost physical. Any other girl would follow him, I suppose. Not me. I flee back to the cafeteria. . .

  “We shouldn’t have pushed him,” Griffin says as I sit down. He sounds contrite.

  “What’s pushing Astral is inside him,” I say. “You just poked at it.” My voice is shaky.

  Luisa and Kayko look puzzled, but Griffin nods. I wasn’t expecting anyone to understand, but he seems to.

  There’s a long silence, then Kayko speaks. “What’s coming up in the holograms next week, Griffin?” There’s a forced brightness in her tone.

  He looks puzzled. “We went over the indexes this morning. You know as well as I do.”

  “I think Kayko is trying to change the subject,” I say. “Thank you, Kayko.”

  “You’re welcome, Blake.” We exaggerate our politeness, making it a joke, but Kayko is doing me a real favour. I need to escape these overwhelming emotions.

  Griffin blushes. “Oh. Sorry. We’re into the reports from 2353 now so things should be heating up. We have some newscasts, and then there was a major protest rally at the Hippodrome that summer, the last event the outside press was allowed to cover. There were holo-cameras attached to all the poles in the stadium, of course, to get the action of sports events from all angles, so the projection should be quite detailed. It might take a while to mine that one for information, but it’s the last we have. We should take our time, give it serious scrutiny.”

  “There’s always the option of breaking the projection into smaller sections,” Kayko says.

  “How do you do that?” I ask.

  “You scale the projection down to get an overview, then impose a grid and break it into identifiable fractiles. I can do that in the master projection room.”